State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg instantly came down on his fellow Democrat Ron Calderon, who is facing charges that he took $100,000 in bribes. Calderon should resign or take a leave, and he if won't, Steinberg said, he will move to suspend him.

There's nothing like 24 counts of mail and wire fraud, bribery, money laundering and tax fraud - all in the Calderon charges - to move Sacramento to contain the stench.

But it brings up a troubling double standard. Steinberg has proved decidedly selective when it comes to lawmaker misconduct. He allowed state Sen. Roderick Wright, a Democrat from Los Angeles County, to choose his own course after a conviction on eight felony counts for misrepresenting his address in candidacy and voter registration papers.

On Tuesday, Wright notified Steinberg that he would take an indefinite leave from his post, and Steinberg assented. Wright will continue to draw his $95,000 salary during his leave.

With Wright, the Senate president pro tem argued that the judge in the case had yet to validate the verdict. Steinberg said he was concerned about forcing Wright out of office when there was a chance, however remote, that the judge could toss out the conviction because of ambiguity about the definition of residency.

Yet if possibility of exoneration was the standard, then why is Calderon not allowed a presumption of innocence when he has not even gone to trial?

One could reasonably argue that misrepresenting residency when running for office - though illegal - is not nearly as grave a crime as the cash-for-favor trading allegedly perpetrated by Calderon and his brother, Tom, a former assemblyman. But a jury verdict is a definitive mark of guilt; an indictment is not, though the disclosures about the Calderons at a minimum show a shocking obliviousness to the appearance of impropriety and respect for the public trust.